Religion in Writing
And, for that matter, gaming.
One of my favorite constructed worlds, or “conworld”, is Tékumel, which is an ongoing project of M.A.R. Barker. One of Professor Barker’s assertions is that religous belief is very important to a created world, but often overlooked or done poorly. In games, we find poorly understood real-world religons being “modernized” or otherwise adapted to the game world in a very surface-level way. Or, religions are simply motions that people go through with little thought or belief behind it. And, while such things often occur in our own world, more people actually believe in a religion of some kind than simply take it as a set of rituals to perform. In any case, it is usually quite a bit more complicated than the way most folks represent. Professor Barker wrote an article about it which you can find in the Blue Room Archives at Tékumel.com It’s worth reading if you’re thinking about integrating a “real” religion into your work.
